Tuesday, January 24, 2017

Unemployment in France: the yield curve finally inverted in 2016 – The Obs

Paris (AFP) – Despite a poor month of December, the inversion of the unemployment curve, as promised by François Hollande, is beautiful and well-substantiated in 2016, Pôle emploi, recording its first annual decline since 2007.

last year, the number of unemployed dropped by 107.400 people (-3,0%) in metropolitan france, according to figures from the ministry of Labour. The indicator had declined on a calendar year since the financial crisis.

“This trend is clearly favourable”, welcomed Myriam El Khomri in a press release, the minister of Labour in welcoming the improvement that comes “after eight consecutive years of increase”.

2016 will have been the year of “the inversion of the unemployment curve”, but the results came in later than I had planned”, conceded François Hollande during his New Year greetings, a month after leaving to stand for a second mandate. Originally announced for 2013, the famous “reversal” will be finally materialized three years later.

Despite the recent improvement, unemployment is a black spot of the last five years: it remains massive, with 3.47 million people without activity (category A) in metropolis and 3.73 million in the whole of France, and Pôle emploi has seen an influx 550.300 additional unemployed persons in metropolitan france since may 2012.

“The unemployment remains high, and it is my fight,” said Ms. El Khomri on Tuesday during a move a company in the Val-de-Marne, where it was greeted by a score of activists CGT protesting against his law work.

Although positive, the year 2016 is somewhat tarnished by the increase recorded in December, following three consecutive months of decline. Last month, unemployment has increased 0.8% (+26.100) in france and 0.7% (+25.900) including overseas.

“We are still in a recovery period, with new hires, who are overwhelmingly in CDD. This yo-yo effect is not yet finished,” says one to the ministry of Labour.

- the Scars of the crisis -

The monthly increase applies to both the “under 25″ (+0,7%) than the “50 years or more” (+1,2%). But the situation of young people remains very well oriented in 2016 (-8,8%), while that of senior citizens continues to deteriorate (+2.2 per cent). For the latter, the degradation is much less strong than in previous years. Between 2008 and 2015, the number of older unemployed workers had nearly tripled (+182%).

The poor figures for December are to be qualified by a decrease in the use of precarious contracts. The number of students enrolled in classes B and C, who carry on an activity but continue to look for work, decreased by 1.3% on the month, to settle at $ 2.0 million metropolis. They remain all the same, an increase of 5.5% on the year.

Philippe Martinez (SGC) saw on Europe 1 “a willingness to generalize the insecurity”. He also pointed out that the increase in the number of job seekers in training, related to the implementation of the plan of 500.000 further education and training for job seekers, that would be a way to “offload to other categories of employees who were not employed”.

“It is rather a stabilisation than a real inversion of the curve,” said Jean-Claude Mailly (FO) on BFM Business, judging the recovery is “very fragile”.

“There is much to an inversion of the curve, but this does not erase the scars of the crisis”, analysis, Bruno Ducoudré, economist at the OFCE, but “for the moment, this decline was due primarily to a recovery of precarious employment.”

in 2017, its observatory “expect a continuation of the decline, at least in the first quarter, but beyond that, it is a little complicated to make predictions, because this will depend on the future president and his program.”

Nine years after the financial crisis, the labour market is far from healing. The publication of the figures Pole employment coincides with the announcement of a new restructuring plan of the group Vivarte, with between 700 and 800 job cuts, just at the Halle aux shoes, and a relocation in Poland factory Whirlpool Amiens.